Endpoint detection firm Confer raises $17M in Series B

Cloud-based security firm Confer, that provides threat prevention and incident response for enterprise owned laptops, servers and mobile devices has secured $17 million in Series B financing led by Foundation Capital with participation from existing investors, Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners.

This Series B funding round brings the total venture capital investment in Confer to $25 million. It secured $8 million in Series A financing from Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners in January 2014.

The investment allows Confer to continue its rapid expansion within the enterprise security market. “Confer’s exceptional detection and prevention capabilities against sophisticated malware, combined with our lightweight footprint and simplicity, have made our solution ideal for the largest and most demanding enterprises in the world as well as small and medium-sized companies. This strategy has really paid off in 2015,” said Mark Quinlivan, chief executive officer for Confer. “Our customers now range in size from 100 to well over 100,000 endpoints and servers protected.”

Since 2014, Confer claims, it has achieved 1,300 percent growth in sales and 2,400 percent growth in revenue, with production deployments across a number of verticals, including technology, retail, finance, pharmaceuticals, energy and communications.

The company claims that in contrast to many endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions, which are detect-only, Confer can block specific behaviors, disrupting the attack before information is lost or damaged.

“After researching the endpoint security space extensively, I’m convinced that customers are looking for an easy, lightweight, but comprehensive solution—one that prevents attacks and enables incident response—for protecting employees on all their devices,” said Aditya Singh, partner with Foundation Capital.

“The other EDR vendors we looked at were too narrow. Confer is the only company we have seen that has the breadth of features combined with proven traction within large-scale production environments. Confer is changing how customers think about endpoint security, providing endpoint security without tradeoffs.”

Confer’s claims to have doubled its headcount since 2014. Key hires in 2015 have included Chief Financial Officer Dave Gamache, who joined the company from Airvana Network Solutions (now part of Ericsson).